Nestle and News UK on how the industry should be convincing consumers to stop using ad blockers

With the number of ad fatigued consumers in the digital space on the rise, Nestle and News UK are on a mission to reverse the trend of ad blocking and make consumers ‘fall back in love’ with advertising.

One of the biggest bug bears for mobile users are poorly targeted ads that follow you around with prompts to buy something that you already did three months ago. Marketers and brands that employ such poor tactics “deserve ad blocking” and need to get back to basics and connect with consumers on a human level, according to Anoo Mehmi, head of digital for Nestle SMA in the UK.

“We have to be relevant and we have to have context, but I think if we move it away from that because that has been discussed to hell and high heaven, I think it does come back to great creativity,” Mehmi said at the Ogilvy Neo breakfast briefing earlier this week (1 November).

“It is really hard with the exponential growth in content to be thumb-stopping on a mobile phone. You do only have that 1.7 second window to draw your consumer in to your world or you’re wrong, and if you keep thinking big screen first, sound on, not using the full technological ambition that the formats offer these days and you continue to offer rubbish mobile ads, then I think we deserve ad blocking.”

For publishers, which rely on advertising to keep their businesses afloat, ad blockers pose a distinct threat. Fellow panellist Mark Field, who today (2 November) joined News UK as managing director of The Bridge – the publisher’s strategic content and commercial division – admonished the advertising industry for not being good enough at explaining the value exchange of advertising to consumers where the digital age first took hold.

“As an industry, what we have been poor at from the very beginning is explaining to consumers the value exchange behind the stuff they are seeing, viewing, and engaging with and the fact that there is advertising there in the first place. [We should have been clear] that advertising covers the cost from the most basic advertising on YouTube channel to big multinational brands that create content and the importance of why advertising is there in the first place.”

To combat ad blockers, publishers need to nail down programmatic to serve the right ads to consumers and become more creative in their approach, he continued.

“As an industry we have to do a bit to help inform people that this stuff doesn’t just exist, it doesn’t just appear, there is a reason why advertising is there. The peril that we face potentially is that the more people ad block, not enough money is going in to the ecosystem and therefore we can’t produce the stuff that people want to see and love to experience. How do we ensure that people understand what it is that they are not necessarily wittingly knowing they are turning off?”